When Health and Company Policy Collides

Last week, it was reported that an 87 year old woman in Bakersfield, California died because the nurse who called 911 refused to give CPR to a woman who needed it. According to the nurse, she could not provide that service as she was not allowed to do so because she was prohibited in doing so. Sadly, the woman died on the way to the hospital because of the fact she didn’t get the assistance she needed.

What’s worse in all this is that the woman’s daughter was satisfied with the care that the elderly woman received from the senior living center she resided at. It seems so wrong that a daughter would be satisfied with a policy that would allow a person to die rather than get the help that was required of them!

Now, of course, you may wonder what this has to do with Staples in any form whatsoever. Well, fellow reader, Staples actually put me in a position where policy collided with the health of not only me but the well-being of other employees and customers shopping in the store.

So here is the scenario:

Around my sixth year of employment with Staples, the store manager Terence was a fairly deaf and downright stupid manager. This plays into the context of exactly into what happened.

On one particular night, one of the security deactivation pads mounted underneath one of the cash register stations decided to go ballistic. The pad decided to make constant “Thumping” sounds at a rate of one every 5 seconds. These were not low volume sounds, but loud annoying sounds that began to give me a headache. After about a 1 ½ of putting up with this pulsing problem, I decided to disconnect the wire to the unit under the counter. Thumping stopped and sanity was restored. That was until deaf Terence realized what I had done. Since this register was the furthest one from me, it was rarely used and I felt not concerned that it would be an issue of what I had done.

Terence thought otherwise. Ironically, about a year or so earlier, I received the ok from the then-manager that it was perfectly acceptable to disconnect a non-functioning unit, which at that time was doing the exact same thing.

The next day, Terence made it a point that he write me up for my ignorance of the equipment and disobeying “store policy”. The irony was that 2 different managers would have 2 different attitudes regarding what I did. To make matters worse, as I later researched, there was NO company policy regarding what I did despite Terence’s anger at me.

Of course, a couple of weeks later, the same piece of equipment were acting up again so I did the same thing. Once again, I got written up and given a warning of termination if I did this again I mentioned to this idiot manager that I disconnected the item for the sanity and health of myself and others. He didn’t buy that and I told him to stand in one spot for hours listening to that sound and see how he felt. He didn’t like my attitude on that, but he pushed me way too far.

About a week later, a technician came into the store to fix the defective pad (replacing it, actually) and I asked if I did the right thing by disconnecting. His response was that I DID do the right thing and actually saved the equipment from doing permanent damage to itself. Unfortunately, Terence stood firm on what he did by writing me up and that stayed in my permanent record for the rest of my employment with the company.

Sadly, years later, this incidence would come back to haunt me when I had my grievance against the company when it would be used against me in my claim against the company. I will have more details about that in a future post.

So overall, the nurse and I took completely opposite directions in dealing with “policy”. I stand behind the fact that what I did was to save my health, the nurse decided to not help an elderly woman to save her job. This all comes down to the question: Is the health of someone worth the price of violating “policy”? I say it is and I would do it over and over again if ever given the chance.

Would I ever recommend anybody else doing the same thing I did? Most definitely and I would let anybody know that NO such policy exists otherwise. I bet the dead elderly lady thinks that there is no policy that realistically the nurse would not have saved her life.

I always believe that health should trump policy no matter what, real or as in Staples’ case every time create lies and deception. Then again isn’t that what this blog is all about in the first place.